The Dark Side of
Innovation
MASTER: ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT THESIS WITHIN: General Management NUMBER OF CREDITS: 15
PROGRAMME OF STUDY: Engineering Management AUTHOR: André Martins Salmazzo and Charikleia Tompea JÖNKÖPING 06/2020
Master Thesis in General Management
Title: The Dark Side of Innovation – Stressors in technology companies and its mitigation.
Authors: André Martins Salmazzo & Charikleia Tompea Tutor: Jerker Moodysson
Date: 2020-05-18
Key terms: technology company, stress, innovation, work-life balance, wellbeing.
Abstract
Background: Innovation is usually connected with benefits inside companies, the most cited by researchers is the competitive advantage. However, the pursuit of innovation may lead to a harmful working environment that can increase stress levels among employees. An industry that is well known by its innovativeness is the tech industry, therefore an investigation on their
working environment is important.
Purpose: Our purpose is to analyse if tech companies are creating a stressful working environment for their own employees, what are the factors that creates this and what kind of techniques and methods are companies using to tackle the increase stress in their working environment. Understanding these topics, we provide a contribution to the theory and a
suggestion for companies follow in order to reduce stress among employees without losing their pursuit for innovativeness.
Method: We utilize secondary data collected from different type of sources. Also, we
use real life examples of companies that are trying tackle stress in their working environment, providing insights on their actions and the outcome of them.
Conclusion: The results show that technology companies have several factors that increase stress in their working environment, some of them associated with company
characteristics, and other associated with the industry that the tech companies are competed in. Also, some of those stressors are not being tackled by methods or techniques that companies are
using in order to reduce the stress among employees. In order to improve their working environment, we suggest technology companies to follow our proposed strategy based in three pillars: flexibility, support and communication.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction ... 1
1.1 Research problem ... 4
1.2 Purpose and Research Question ... 5
1.3 Perspective ... 6
2 Theoretical Framework ... 6
2.1 Innovation ... 7 2.1.1 Innovation Importance ... 9 2.1.2 Technology Companies ... 11 2.1.3 Achieving Innovation ... 122.2 Employees and Stressful Working Environment ... 13
2.2.1 Stressors at Work ... 16 2.3 Impact on employees ... 18 2.3.1 Employee stress ... 19 2.3.2 Job satisfaction... 20 2.3.3 Performance ... 21
3 Methodology ... 22
3.1 Research Philosophy ... 22 3.2 Data Collection ... 24 3.3 Data Analysis ... 254 Empirical Findings ... 27
4.1 Working Environment of Technology Companies... 27
4.1.1 Preventing Job Stress ... 30
4.1.2 Techniques and Methods ... 31
4.2 Successful Examples ... 35 4.2.1 Microsoft ... 35 4.2.2 Google ... 36 4.2.3 Ultimate Software ... 37 4.2.4 NETFLIX ... 39
5 Analysis ... 41
5.1 Stressors and measures taken to control it ... 41
5.2 Reducing stress and increasing job satisfaction and productivity ... 45
6 Conclusion ... 47
7 Discussion ... 48
7.1 Limitations... 49 7.2 Implications ... 50 7.3 Future Research ... 51References ... 52
Figures
Figure 1 Data Collection & Analysis Process………..Error!
Bookmark not defined.
Figure 2 Ultimate Software Employee Experience………..25
Tables
Table 1 Stressors Category………..11 Table 2 Stressors Category Analysis.………..……..27
Appendix
1 Introduction
The global market today is highly demanding, and this particular characteristic of this environment is creating a necessity on companies of being ‘competitive if they want to succeed in business. There are five different dimensions that entrepreneurs use in order to keep their company competitive: autonomy, innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness, and competitive aggressiveness (Lumpkin & Dess, 1996). Innovation is the common capability that previous researchers have pointed out as one of the most important one for companies. Affirmations like innovation is the heart of entrepreneurship (Stevenson & Gumpert, 1985), and without innovation there is no corporate entrepreneurship regardless of the presence of those other dimensions (Covin & Miles, 1999) evaluates the idea and importance of innovation in the business. Additionally, most authors accept that all dimensions of entrepreneurship are based on innovations (Stopford and Baden-Fuller, 1994). With such high importance in companies’ life, the theme innovation has been studied throughout the years and mostly have been connected with firm’s success and market’s benefit. Where the argument adopted is that if a company wants to be competitive and maintain their dominance within the market, building innovate culture may be the way (Wagner, 1999). Most researcher recognize that innovation can sustain firm’s survival in the market (Bruderl, Preisendorfer & Ziegler, 1992; Audretsch and Mahmood, 1995; Wagner, 1999).
Those competitive markets can be called red oceans. Red oceans represent all the industries in existence today and the know market space, where the boundaries of the market are defined and accepted, and here, companies try to outperform their competitors to grab a bigger share of customers and increase their profit (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). The name red ocean is due the fact that this part of the market is usually a blood-bath, where the tentative of outperform competitors creates a highly competitive environment. In contrast, there are the blue oceans, the place where the market space is unknown, where a combination of innovativeness and strategies creates a new space for companies perform with no competitors and with high profitability (Kim & Mauborgne, 2005). Therefore, again, it is possible to understand the ambitiousness of companies to use innovation in order to achieve such blue ocean.
An industry that is commonly perceived as an innovative driven industry is the technological, and there only a few companies sailing in the blue ocean of technology. In short terms, the technology industry is an industrial market inside the category science-based firms (Pavitt, 1984), where there are high-tech firms that rely from research and development processes created by their company, providing a high number of innovations, patterns, processes and a high know-how ability to their customers(Pavitt, 1984). They are considered the most innovative firms because they possess a fast cycle market, where a company in this market has to generate continuously new ideas and products in order to sustain its competitive advantage among others (Covin & Miles, 1999). Therefore, technology companies try to maintain their competitive advantages by relying on their innovativeness capabilities. Having such importance in terms of innovativeness in our world, technological companies are perceived exactly for what they are well-known: their innovations. Effects of an innovation are generally assumed to be positive and desirable (Simpson, Siguaw, Enz, 2006) being commonly associated only with benefits, while the downsizes of innovativeness of a company is taken for granted, by a simple selection bias: companies which successfully commercialize innovations are most likely to survive, dominating the society and performing with high profitability (Covin & Miles, 1999).
Innovation oriented firms can experience two types of outcomes when it comes to innovativeness, some of them are positive and some are negative. The positive outcomes are innovations-related outcomes, market advantages, employee advantages and operational excellence. The negatives outcomes are too much changes for change sake (unprofitable and unnecessary innovations), market risk, increased costs and negative effects in employees, like job dissatisfaction, low productivity and the increase stress levels (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006). This thesis will focus on how employees are affected by the working environment created in technology companies, in terms of job satisfaction, productivity and stress levels, and what are companies doing to improve their working environment.
The work environment of an innovation-oriented firm must encourage and facilitate continual creativity and change, but while many employees find this environment challenging and rewarding, others are far more comfortable in a structured, stable and unchanging environment. (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006). One of the conclusions that Simpson, Siguaw & Enz (2006) have presented in their research is that highly innovation-oriented firms will lead their industry in employee job stress and dissatisfaction. In addition, Baucus M. (Baucus
et al, 2008) states that sometimes companies that are fostering innovation and creativity can
encourage unethical behaviours which can lead to a stressful working environment. Therefore, a study in adjustments needed in innovation-oriented firms within the technology industry is interesting, in order for companies being able to maintain itself competitive in the market through innovativeness, but improving the working environment in order to reduce the stress and dissatisfaction level of their own employees.
Understanding the importance and the need of innovativeness in a fast cycle market of technological companies and the factors that can create a harmful environment for this companies’ employees, our study is structured in order to make a contribution to the literature. Firstly, we deepen our understanding through a literature review on the innovation topic associated with technology companies, understanding why innovation is important to technology companies. Secondly, we focus on researching how are technology companies trying to reach innovation and how this pursuit can create a harmful environment for their employees. Lastly in the literature review, we researched about how the impacts that this harmful environment created in technology companies can affect employees. In the empirical findings we present how companies are trying to reduce the harmful environment created and we provide real life examples of companies that introduced some techniques and methods, and what was the outcome of this changes. By analysing our empirical findings and data, we will be able to generalize from data to a contribution in the literature.
The paper is organized as follows: The first section is dedicated to introduction and the problem itself, explaining our research question, background and motivation. Section 2 is presented the concept of innovation and its importance to companies through a literature review. In this section, we also present the creation of a harmful environment to employees and the negative effects of it in their lives. After, we present our methodology and explanations on why we have done this research this way, clarifying points of view and philosophies. Section 4 is dedicated to empirical findings, where it is presented changes that companies have been trying to implement in order to increase employee quality of working environment, providing examples of cases and their results of this implementation. The next section is the analysis part, where we present the major sources of stress in tech companies and what are the management team doing in order to reduce it. Also, we suggest a theory based in our empirical findings on how can the management team control stress while
increasing job satisfaction and productivity among their employees. Lastly, we present our conclusion.
1.1 Research problem
With several authors confirming that being an innovative company is a necessary characteristic if a company wants to succeed in today’s market environment (Stevenson & Gumpert, 1985; Covin & Miles, 1999; Stopford and Baden-Fuller, 1994) it is easy to overlook the downsides of these characteristic in employee’s life, focusing only in the benefits, improvements, and enhancements that being an innovative company can provide. Nowadays, the market is a fast speed place where changes are happening all the time (Covin & Miles, 1999) making the innovation in companies not only a survival tool, but is directly related to a firm’s growth. Mostly, innovation is related with big technological companies, point that is proven when you look for the most valuable companies in the world, where most of them are well known for their brilliant innovative products and high market value. Those companies are connecting their brand names with entrepreneurial and innovative culture, focusing on their innovative products, but maybe they are overlooking the conditions of the work that they require from their employees. From the 5 biggest companies in the world in market value, 4 of them are technological companies and from the US (Duffin, 2019), showing again the importance of innovativeness in this market. In order to stay competitive and keep the brand name between the most powerful in the world, those companies are acting year after year to keep up the pace of a fast circle market that requires a continuously product development (Gaubinger, Rabl, Swan & Werani, 2009).
A workplace app for tech employees called Blind, have conducted a one question survey in order to discover if tech employees were suffering from job burnout. This app is used by 40,000 Microsoft employees, 25,000 from Amazon, 10,000 from Google, 7,000 from Uber, 6,000 from Facebook and thousands from other tech companies (Bradford, 2018). From the respondents, 57,16% answered yes, they are suffering from job burnout. According to this research, the company Credit Karma had the highest rate, with over 70% of their employees saying that they suffer from burnout, while the Netflix was the lowest rate with 39%. Therefore, in the best case, almost 40% of the employees are suffering from burnout, which shows that tech companies have a problem. The numbers of the other companies can be seeing in appendix 1. With variations between 70% to 40%, it is interesting that an analysis
must be conducted in the tech industries environment in order to improve employees’ life and improve the balance between goals from the company with health of employees. As per Microsoft’s data, the developers and the testers are the most affected burn out categories in the technological field, it is estimated that that 10 percent of the new hires leave the company each year (Cusumano M.A. et al, 1998).
Innovativeness and creativity are important capabilities that companies are always aiming for and they are what makes the different in the market and survive under these difficult conditions that they are facing, it needs to significantly increase the effectiveness as well as the efficiency of its internal innovation activities (Gaubinger et al., 2009). But it is also needed to take in consideration that stress levels are increased among employees during this search for innovation competitiveness. That is why it is important that business recognize both sides while they are pursuing the innovation on their companies, the good-side and the dark side. Therefore, companies should realize that improving employees working environment in terms of stress and deliveries exigencies, and aiming for the innovation needed to keep their company as top brand in the market, those two key capabilities can work together, realizing that the innovativeness needed within their companies can be achieved while keeping a low stress level in their company.
1.2 Purpose and Research Question
Most of the literature that is founded about innovation is related with improvement of innovativeness and its benefits, mostly in management and company perspective (Stevenson & Gumpert, 1985; Bruderll, et al., 1992; Audretsch and Mahmood, 1995; Wagner, 1999; Covin & Miles, 1999; Stopford and Baden-Fuller, 1994). In this research we will investigate from a different perspective from those. The negative side of innovation in technology companies will be explored, particularly thinking about employees of those companies and how their working environment inside those technology company impacts on their lives. Therefore, we are aiming for the downsizes that the pursuit of innovation of those companies can bring in to the employees and the effects that they may face.
Our purpose is to advice companies on how the search for innovativeness can be reached without creating such harmful environment to employees. In order to achieve that, firstly we understand how employee’s quality of life and work is affected by this environment created by technological companies while searching for innovation. This will help to understand how
the employees are affected due the overwhelming pressure that they may suffer. Secondly, we will evaluate and explain cases that have already been conducted by real technological companies, showing what they have done to reduce the stressful environment without losing innovativeness and what was the outcome of this changes.
After our analysis of the data gathered, our objective is to make a contribution showing companies how they can improve employee’s working environment without losing the innovativeness that they need to have in order to succeed in this market. To reach this purpose clearly, we have the research question:
Research Question
RQ: How can technological companies reduce stress among employees while increasing their productivity and
job satisfaction?
With the objective of answering this research question, we also have to address other sub-questions in this research:
Which factors of technology companies’ environment can act as stressors for employees?
What are the measures that technology companies have taken to manage the stress in their companies?
1.3 Perspective
The current research will examine the technological company’s perspective on how an organization can reduce the stress levels among the employees. Our first step is to find the reasons and the company’s actions that cause stress to employees. Then we will review the literature proposals for limiting a stressful working environment and why this is beneficial for the companies. Finally, we will analyse some real market examples and their successful strategies that have been adopted in order to confront this issue.
In order to respond our research question, firstly we have conducted a literature review that will be presented next. In this literature review, we present what is innovation, why it is important to companies and how this companies are trying to achieve it. Followed by an explanation on the relationship between innovative technological companies and stressful working environment, moving on to the impact of this stressful environment in their employees.
2.1 Innovation
Innovation is a frequently term used in research as well as the operational level inside companies (Gaubinger et al., 2009), but it is important to clarify some differences specially between innovation and invention, since both definitions and concepts can sometimes be mixed. One of the biggest characteristics of innovation is that innovation has an aspect of commercial exploitation and it is utilized at the operational level (Gaubinger et al., 2009), where the innovation introduces an invention (new product or process) to the market and makes it competitive inside the market that they were inserted on (Gaubinger et al., 2009). Innovation, like entrepreneurship, are values that do not have a specifically agreed definition (Davidsson, 2004). If we take in consideration a grammar perspective, innovation is mostly framed and connected with the criterion of novelty, considered as its core feature (Gaubinger
et al., 2009). In a business perspective, the definition is different, it is affirmed that innovation
is difficult to claim because there is no such thing as original or totally new idea (Weiskopf, 2016). This statement done by Weiskopf has been supported by him through examples, like art, that nothing can be totally original or new, and if we believe the opposite, we do it because we do not the origin of this innovation, the origin is obscure (Weiskopf, 2016), therefore we assume that it is something completely new. These two different perspectives present us a point showing that a single definition of innovation is really hard to be achieved, but it has some research confirmed characteristics.
One of the characteristics that innovation in business is connected with is knowledge. It is believed that existing knowledge is creating the path for the innovation (Jang et al 2002). Meanwhile innovation creates new knowledge, and this can be used in a future innovation as existing knowledge, it is a continuous circle. The capture and the communication of this knowledge is known as knowledge management and it is believed that is a key for generating innovation (Jang et al 2002). Jang and his team support their affirmation by providing an
example about Samsung Company. In details, in Jang’s article explains how Samsung had lost an amount of time and money while they were trying to introduce and adapting themselves to other companies’ methods for enterprise resource planning (ERP). After a lot of energy wasted, Samsung turn back to others innovation and focused on their own knowledge to explore, extend and re-innovate their own established system (Jang et al 2002). Another point that innovation and business are connected is that on this perspective, a “final” innovative thing usually includes many other mini innovations in their process that where a stepstone or sometimes a realization for the final result that an actor wanted to achieve (Weiskopf ,2016). A great real-world example of this idea is a company called Canva Software, with its CEO Melanie Perkins. Canva Software is an online design tool that allows their users to create their own design from business cards to presentations. Melanie Perkins had the Canva Software idea from her university years, but firstly, she designed and launched a software called Fusion Books. Fusion Books is a platform that helps users to design and create their own comic book, transforming itself in one of the stepstones for the future software, Canva. Melanie Perkins have stated that she decided first to launch the Fusion Books because of two main reasons: Firstly, she did not have all the resources needed to create and launch Canva Software. Secondly, by launching a “smaller” version of a design software, she knew that she could test the design tool idea and identify problems that may need be fixed before the Canva Software launch. Three years after the Fusion Books has been launched, she decided to launch Canva, in 2017, which today is considered one of the most successful start-ups company.
According to the OECD Oslo Manual (1992), there are four types of innovation: Firstly, product innovation, where a service or a product is new or significantly improved. This may include improvement in technical specifications, components and materials, software in the product, user friendliness or other function characteristics. Secondly, process innovation, where a new or significantly improved process is delivered, changing techniques, equipment or software. Thirdly, marketing innovation, where a new marketing method involves significant changes in product design or packing, product placement, promotion or pricing. Lastly, organisational innovation, where a new organisational method in business practices, workplace organization or external relations take place.
For this thesis, we will follow the definition where it is stated that innovation is a concept which is created by restructured the industry or the business model in order to make something new and increase the value of something in the eyes of the customer (Matthyssens
et al, 2005). Also, we will proceed with the first type of innovation presented by the Oslo
Manual (1992), product innovation, where product innovation, where a service or a product is new or significantly improved. In addition, it is needed to keep in mind that to achieve this innovative concept multiple resources needs to be combined like as knowledge, technology, organizational rearrangements or methods (Weiskopf ,2016), therefore to a company be innovative, they need to look not only for product development, but also to other concepts that makes a difference in succeeding or not in innovativeness.
2.1.1 Innovation Importance
In the current global economy and environmental complexity organizations must face many challenges. Representative of some of these problems are environmental issues, lower cost through operational efficiency, speed in responding in markets and customers and flexibility (Baucus et al, 2008). Researchers believe that these challenges can be resolved by advocating creativity and innovation (Baucus et al, 2008). In today’s market, a company economic development is related with their innovation level and entrepreneurship level, so companies can follow this innovation revolution or become its victims (Kuratko, 2009).
Simpson, Siguaw & Enz (2006) conducted a study in order to access the positive outcomes of innovation orientation companies by having in depth interviews with high level executives and entrepreneurs, aiming for research about this phenomenon. In their study, they affirm that innovation-oriented companies have five main positive effects over normal companies: Innovations-related outcomes, market advantages, employee advantages and operational excellence. Firstly, innovation-related outcomes were one of the most important things that respondents indicated, saying that innovation impacts in numbers, rates and types of innovation that a firm produce. As an example, they mentioned quantity and quality of innovations, shorter cycle times, and speed of new innovations development. Highly innovation-oriented firms will lead their industry in producing radical and incremental innovations up to an ideal point, bringing innovations to market faster up to an ideal point and developing higher quality innovations of all types (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006).
Secondly, they that an innovation-oriented firm will derive consumer benefits including enhanced customer satisfaction, loyalty and image, connecting in a long-term relationship with their customer, through delivering their customer needs, creating customer value (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006). Those characteristics enable companies to charge higher prices, enabling higher market appeal in the eyes of customers, which means more profit, and increasing corporate image, instigating customers to be part of that brand (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006). Higher innovation-oriented firms will lead their industry in customer satisfaction and loyalty (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006).
Thirdly, innovation in general is considering by the current business market and the management literature as the answer to sustain competitive advantage (Matthyssens et al, 2006). Creating a competitive advantage can ensure the financial growth of a company and increase the importance of the firm in the market and this is what makes the innovation important (Ireland, Webb, 2007). In addition, innovation can open the way for new markets and opportunities (Covin & Miles, 1999). Through innovation a firm can sustain its competitive superiority by creating new value concepts and continuously rejuvenate the deliverables and the needs that are created for the customers (Matthyssens et al, 2005). Firms with greater capacity to innovate will be more successful in responding to their environments and developing new capabilities that lead to competitive advantage and superior performance, leading their industries in company-specified competition-related measures, such as market share (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006).
Fourthly, innovation-oriented firms will likely lead to greater enjoyment, self-fulfilment, and job satisfaction by employees (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006). But in this point, they highlight that the working environment and conditions of innovation-oriented company is challenging and highly demanding and in the same study they pointed out employees’ attitudes, like job stress level, dissatisfaction, burnout and reduced turnover as negative outcomes from those types of companies. In addition, workforce effects of an innovation-oriented firm have long been assumed as good, but have limited empirical substantiation in the literature (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006).
Lastly, an innovation-orientation provides a firm with the capability of developing and implementing innovations, not only increasing in number of those innovations, but will
enhance operational efficiency, mostly transforming them in leaders of this capability in their industry (Simpson, Siguaw & Enz, 2006).
Based on those characteristics presented, innovation can show the way for new market spaces and improve the effectiveness of a company (Matthyssens et al, 2005), being clear that innovative actions and culture are necessary for all the companies despite their size, if they want to succeed inside their markets (Peltola, 2012).
Since we are focusing in technological companies in this thesis, is important to clarify the importance of innovation to this environment. Besides the fast paced and high changes velocity that this market has as characteristic, acting as a catalyst for the search for innovativeness, technological companies should not focus only on technological aspect but more to create new and improved customer value by reconceptualize their business model or the industry (Matthyssens et al, 2005). Technological solution alone will not lead to a bigger profitability, if are not combine with unique concepts (Matthyssens et al, 2005).
2.1.2 Technology Companies
In order to clarify what is a technology company, we will follow the structured proposed by Keith Pavitt (1984), that there are four categories of industrial firms. The first one is supplier-dominated, where it includes manufacturing firms that rely on external sources of innovation, like textile and agriculture industry. The second category is scale-intensive, industries that produce basic materials and consumer durables like the automotive sector and the source of innovation is internal and external. The third category is firms suppliers-specialized, where they focus in producing technology to be sold into other firms, like specialized machinery production and high-tech instruments. The fourth category are science-based firms, they are the high-tech firms that rely on research and development from internal sources, having the characteristic of developing new products and process fastly and having a high degree of patents.
Technology companies are inserted in the fourth category, science-based firms. Their main resources are the research and development acitvity and the rapid development and implementation of innovations (Pavitt, 1984). They are innovation-oriented companies that focuses on developing key organizational competencies in resource allocation, technology, employees, operations and markets (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006). These types of
companies are inserted in a fast-paced circle market, requiring a continuous product development (Gaubinger, Rabl, Swan & Werani, 2009). They are responsible for producing their own technology processes, as well as a high portion of product innovations that are used in other sectors of the society (Pavitt, 1984).
2.1.3 Achieving Innovation
Innovation is the main tool in entrepreneurship and is considered as a mechanism which redefine or rejuvenate established companies, their positions within markets and the competitive arenas in which they compete (Covin & Miles, 1999). In order to achieve a corporate entrepreneurship and built an innovation culture the first step is to establish an entrepreneurial strategy. Entrepreneurial strategy is a plan of actions which combine strategy and entrepreneurship for creating value (Ireland, Webb, 2007). An entrepreneurial strategy should be progressive, proactive and impermanent (Peltola, 2012). Progressive in terms of systematic steps in particular order which will guide in the wanting actions and results. Proactive in order to be ready to react in the market changes and plan according their future. Impermanent by the meaning of the flexibility and that maybe will be the need of constant renewal of the strategy.
The upper management is the one that must set up the new strategy and the most important to share the vision clearly to the employees (Kuratko, 2009). The explanation of the vision includes the company’s expectation in terms of innovation behaviour, which is the goal and what is the level of entrepreneurial intensity (Morris et al, 2006). The level of entrepreneurial intensity describes the frequency and the degree which a company want to innovate. All the above steps will lead the way for organizational changes, where the strategic vision will become specific tasks and works (Peltola, 2012). The organizational structure will be reconstructed, and the resources will be reorganized as per the opportunity seeking and the advantage seeking. Firm’s vision will lead these changes and will create a new balance between exploration and exploitation (Ireland, Webb, 2007). The balance between exploration and exploitation different for each company, there are factors that will assist a firm to achieve the optimal balance. These factors are the changes in external environment and how dynamic is the market that the firm is competing with (Ireland, Webb, 2007). The entrepreneurial strategy includes also to create a competitive advantage for the company in order to succeed in the market lead and have a financial growth. Through this strategy and
organizational changes, a firm has to reconsider and relocate their position in the one or more markets. The recommended actions for this process are to rethink, to redefine and to choose. Rethink what is the firm’s competitive advantage and how it adds values in the firm in financial terms and in practice for the client (Peltola, 2012). Define company’s client target group outside of the conventional domains, try to see the bigger picture of the user market. Then choose the clients that are matching not only firm’s competitive advantage but also with company’s ambition vision that want to achieve (Peltola, 2012).
The most difficult part for an establish company is to continue to be innovative and sustain an entrepreneurial working environment. The upper management can establish an entrepreneurial strategy but the middle and lower level of a firm plays the most important role in the implementation and maintain of the strategy (Covin & Miles, 1999). It is common phenomenon, the innovation spirit to be lost in the every day working routine and the long-term vision to be replaced in the short next six moth plan (Peltola, 2012). The managers in senior, middle and first level are the main force for support a continuously innovative strategy. There are five responsibilities that a manager can work on in order to promote and sustain an entrepreneurial working environment (Kuratko, 2009). First responsibility is to frame the challenge, to create innovative projects with clarified challenges for the team. Second responsibility is to absorb the uncertainty, a leader has to create a self-confidence environment and give freedom to the team. Third responsibility is to define gravity, that means that a manger must put the limits for what is accepted and what is not. The fourth responsibility is clearing the obstacles, obstacles form the internal and the external environment like political issues or even resources issues. The fifth and last responsibility is to monitor the project, a leader should be always involved in the project but without disarranging the flexibility and the freedom of the team. In addition, Yulk suggests three attributes that can empower the creativity and the innovation thinking, these attributes are reasonable autonomy to employees, freedom of failure and missions with critical resources (Baucus M. et al, 2008).
2.2 Employees and Stressful Working Environment
Organizational stress is defined as the collective awareness of individuals of personal dysfunction as a result of perceived conditions or happenings in the work setting (Lukas, Menon & Bell, 2001).
Together with ambiguity and conflict, work overload is accepted as a key element of job stress, being particularly salient aspect of organizational performance (Lukas, Menon & Bell, 2001). In the highly competitive and fast-paced environment of tech industries, high level of stress, burnout and work-related problems are quite common (Bradford, 2018). Employees involved in new product development and innovation processes in general are affected by continuous stress, as well as a characteristic of “challenging” the rules that technological companies expose their employees.
Accelerating New Product Development
The idea of developing a new product in a reduced time goes beyond than simply asking for employees to do the tasks that they were used to do in shorter time, it can include changes or realignments in processes, exploration of new approaches to manufacturing, the implementation of new organizational learning models or tools, new patterns that employees should follow, among other adjustments (Lukas, Menon & Bell, 2001). With so many different factors that accelerating the develop of a product, each of these factors puts added pressure on employees who are attempting to meet the reduced time schedule and demands (Lukas, Menon & Bell, 2001). As mentioned before, technological market is a fast-paced environment, where innovative products must be being released to public fast if a company wants to remain on top, being a perfect place for the increase of job dissatisfaction and stress among employees. Consequently, many employees inside those organizations might find this fast-paced environment to be physically and emotionally draining, because the pressure of executing new product strategies and connecting all those factors under uncertainty will increase the stress levels, especially when performance expectations remain demanding and high in a constant level (Lukas, Menon & Bell, 2001). In the study done by Lukas, Menon, & Bell (2006), they have argued that their results show that there is a significant relationship between innovation speed and organizational level, stating that accelerated innovation raises organizational stress level among employees. Organizations tempt to emphasizing in short-term profitability which can create tension between the team and gaps in the innovation process (Baucus et al, 2008). Developing an innovation concept and not just a new product, requires creativity, experimentation and risk taking, ingredients which give to employees the freedom to test and explore new ideas and approaches. A short-term focus is not a culture that facilitates innovation and creativity (Baucus et al, 2008). In addition, short term strategy, makes the employees not to feel connected either committed to the firms, because they feel
that an employee’s productivity is evaluating only by the outcome, like a product development, and not by their general contribution in the organization (Baucus et al, 2008). Innovation Processes
Innovation processes are unpredictable and controversial and may have unexpected dysfunction effects on teams (Janssen, Vliert, & West, 2004). Innovation processes generally involves changes in team norms and procedures, ways of performing certain tasks and changes in the relationships between the team members (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). Two characteristics that can occur when implementing innovation processes in teams are the uncertainty and ambiguity, and both of them can negatively affect team functioning, contributing to increasing the level of tension within the teams (Janssen, Vliert, & West, 2004). Another point that needs to be mentioned is that teams when experiencing innovative processes, they need to perform these new activities while doing their regular roles and teams tasks (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016), which will increase their workload and will result in greater feelings of tension and anxiety among team members of innovative teams (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016).The implementation of innovations can be a source of task conflict within work teams (Anderson, Carsten, & Nijstad, 2004), and with the increasing conflicts clash between employees, the introduction of innovation in teams may contribute to increasing the level of negative team mood through feelings of tension and anxiety, contributing to the creation of a harmful environment to employees and increasing their stress level (DeChurch, Mesmer-Magnus, & Doty, 2013).
Encouraging unethical behaviours
There are some perceptions for increasing creativity and innovativeness that some firms are following but in parallel are raising ethical issues and employees stress level (Holten & Bollingtoft, 2015). The most common is the ‘breaking the rules’ approach that some companies suggest (Baucus et al, 2008). Breaking the rules means that the employees can resist or ignore an operational procedure and follow a personal different procedure path. It is recognised that ‘breaking the rules’ offers new perspectives, suggests different solution in problems and realization of ‘frozen’ procedures. Nevertheless, rule- breaking raises critical questions like ‘which rules can be broken?’ ‘What are the circumstances which a rule can be broken?’, ‘There is any limit which rules can be broken?’, who makes and who breaks the
rules?’ (Baucus M. et al, 2008). All these questions force the employees to make decisions in key ethical issues by themselves.
Another perception that companies use is to create on purpose team conflict, competition and stress (Baucus et al, 2008). The majority of the people are enjoying being in a cohesive team, and some team members will avoid making a conflict even if this create a critical thinking or decision making (Baucus et al, 2008). That is the reason that some firms use as a strategy to create conflict, competition and stress in order to push employees into development experiences and out of their comfort zone. On the other hand, this type of activities can lead in negative consequences not only for the employees but also for the company because is very easy the things to go out of control (Baucus et al, 2008). One example of the ugly turn that this type of strategy can take is IDEO. IDEO is a design company well known for their innovation designs. The founders in order to increase creativity supported an atmosphere of ‘competitive playfulness’ (Baucus et al, 2008). This atmosphere did not benefit the innovation process in contrast increased the criticism of other’s ideas, generated team conflicts and unhealthy competition among the employees. In addition, this strategy not only increased the stress level of individual employee but gradually the ‘competitive playfulness’ activities became uncontrollable. The playfulness turns into to physical danger and abusive behaviours, like once IDEO employees glowed the office door of their manager while he was inside or hiding co-worker’s electronic files (Baucus et al, 2008). As a result, the employees were not feeling safe either committed in their working environment and that had a negative impact in the working tasks and productivity (Baucus et al, 2008).
2.2.1 Stressors at Work
Cooper & Marshall (1976) conducted a review of literature on what was the major sources of stress in working environments, where they stated that there are five categories with factors inside each one of them. In order to visualize it, the table 1 present them:
Table 1 Stressors Categories
Category Factors
Intrinsic to the Job Workload
Pace / Variety /
Meaningfulness of Work
Autonomy
Flexibility
Physical environment
Isolation at the workplace
Role in the Organization Role conflict (Multiple
supervisors/managers)
Ambiguity (lack of clear responsibilities or tasks
to do)
Level of responsibility
Career Development Under/over promotion
Job security
Development Opportunities
Overall job satisfaction
Interpersonal relationships Supervisor
Co-workers
Subordinates
Threat of violence, harassment,
etc.
Organizational structure Participation in
decision-making
Management style
Communication patterns Source: Adapted from Cooper & Marshall (1976)
The category intrinsic to the job present factors that is related with the working conditions of a particular job (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). The factors of this categories are connected to the job itself, like the quantity of work needed to be done by employees (workload) and how fast the employees need to do that quantity of work (pace of work) (Cooper & Marshall, 1976).
When it comes to the category role in the organization, the factors presented are associated with a person’s role at work (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). For example, role ambiguity exists when an individual has inadequate information about his work role, having a lack of clarity about the work objectives (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). Role conflict exists when an individual in a particular work role is torn by conflicting job demands, usually happens when an individual is caught between two different teams to complete two different functions at the same time (Cooper & Marshall, 1976).
Career development in the third category and refers to the impact of the development of a person’s career in that organization, like underpromotion or overpromotion, lack of job security etc. (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). Unfairness in the company, lack of development opportunities and the lack of stability in the job are factors that negatively impacts the job satisfaction among employees, increasing their stress at work (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). The fourth category is interpersonal relationships. A good relationship between members of a work group are a central factor in individual and organizational health (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). Environments that include low trust between employees and bosses, low friendship and partnership, low supportiveness and low communication are more propense to develop a high level of stress among the whole organization (Cooper & Marshall, 1976).
The last category is organizational structure, and is related simply on “being part in the organization”, which means those aspects of the structure of an organization which can make working life either satisfactory or stressful (Cooper & Marshall, 1976). Low participation in decision-making, the management style of an organization and communication patterns between members of the companies are factors that influences on the amount of stress caused in employees (Cooper & Marshall, 1976).
2.3 Impact on employees
Because companies and teams are inserted in a place where the changing in the market environment is fast, they need to innovate in order to keep competitive in inside their markets (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). There seems to be a universal perception of the added value and even necessity of employees being creative and innovative (Holten & Bollingtoft, 2015). Combined with the fact that creativity and innovation have become performance requirements, it may be difficult for employees not to comply (Holten & Bollingtoft, 2015).
However, this search for creativity, innovation and profitability not only provide functional and good things to a company and to their employees, but the outcome can be dysfunctional consequences that directly affects company results and employees’ life (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). Asking for working teams to implement innovations all the time can create and induce shared mood of tension and anxiety among the employees, and the result of this negative effect is a shared low satisfaction level of employees toward their jobs and lower team performance, transforming employees in less effective and stressed workers (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016).
2.3.1 Employee stress
Stress occurs when the demands that are being placed upon a person tax or exceed available resources as appraised by the individual involver (Lambert, Lambert, & Yamase, 2003; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). Routines amounts of stress at home, at school, and at work might be fairly benign when considered individually, but collectively, they can create great strain to the mind, to the body and to related system, especially because stress has a cumulative nature (Brock & Buckley, 2012).
The work environment of an innovation-oriented firm must encourage and facilitate continual creativity and change (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006), but while many employees find this environment challenging and rewarding despite all the difficulties and pressure, other employees are far more comfortable in a structured, stable and unchanging environment (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006), showing that how the employee perceive their jobs and situational of stress can impact on the creation (or not) of a harmful working place. Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, (2006) conducted interviews in order to understand this field better, and they have stated in their research that one of their interviewees affirmed that “innovation-oriented firms are fundamentally promotion chaos, which can scare some people away from them”. Other respondent affirmed that “those types of companies are reducing a comfort level in their processes” and “some people simple cannot handle the pressure of changes”. Employees unable to adapt to an innovation-oriented environment may experience high level of stress and dissatisfaction towards their jobs (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006). Highly innovation-oriented firms will lead their industry in employee job stress and employee dissatisfaction (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006).
When stress is severe or prolonged, it can have serious consequences for the body (Weiten, 2004). When a person faces continuous challenges without any relief or relaxation during the process, stress becomes negative, having an outcome of employees overworked, and building stress related issues (Weiten, 2004). Stress can disturb the body’s internal balance, leading to physical symptoms including headaches, upset stomach, elevated blood pressure, chest pain, problems sleeping and sundry other illnesses (Weiten, 2004). Prolonged stress contributes to many physical and psychological ills, as it compromises the effectiveness of the immune system (Brock & Buckley, 2012). Some examples are the production of inflammatory hormones that can lead to heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Further on, stress can spark flare ups of rheumatoid arthritis and digestive disorders and create depression, anxiety, dizziness and rapid heartbeats (Brock & Buckley, 2012).
A stressful workplace becomes a breeding ground for both behavioural and physical health problems (Brock & Buckley, 2012). Some indicators including headache, relational disturbances, upset stomach, sleep disturbance, and mood disturbances are typically easy to recognize, but the occupational stress is more linked to chronic issues such as cardiovascular disease, musculoskeletal disorder and psychological disorders (Colligan & Higgins, 2005). Job stress can also harm health indirectly by fostering a range of behaviours which are negative to a persons’ health like cigarette smoking, higher body weight, poor diet, lack of exercise and alcohol abuse (LaMontagne & Keegel, 2012).
2.3.2 Job satisfaction
Job satisfaction is a widely and complex phenomenon, it follows that there are numerous definitions of the concept (Lumley, Coetzee, Tladinyane, & Ferreira, 2011). Some definitions presented in literature converge in some affirmations: Job satisfaction can be defined as an individual’s total feeling about their job and the attitudes they have towards various aspects or facets of their job, as well as an attitude and perception that could consequently influence the degree of fit between the individual and the organization (Ivancevich & Matteson, 2002; Spector 1997). Job satisfaction is an evaluative judgment made about one’s job or job situation (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). It is considered a result of an individual’s perception and evaluation of their job influenced by their own unique needs, values and expectations, which they regard as being important to them. This satisfaction is directly connected to some job factors like organizational structure, size, pay, working conditions and leadership (Sempane, Rieger & Roodt, 2002). With a low rate of job satisfaction, the workforce retention
of companies can suffer on keeping talents, since a Kronos survey shows that 95% of HR leaders agreed that a low job satisfaction impacts on retaining talents in the company (Bradford, 2018).
People react affectively to work events that occur in their work environments, and these affective experiences have a direct influence on job satisfaction (Weiss & Cropanzano, 1996). This idea is based on the Affective Events Theory (AET), developed by Weiss & Cropanzano in 1996, where the reaction can be positive or negative depending on the event that have occurred and how those employees perceived their jobs. It is important to notice that mood is transmittable between teams inside a company, so team members’ judgment can be influenced and changed by the way that other team members view the situation, so a shared evaluative judgment normally emerges after a situation (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). Based on AET, if a team experiences a high level of shared negative mood, the working environment and the events that take place in it will be unpleasant for team members, and the shared evaluative judgment about that environment will be unfavourable and harmful (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). A person with high job satisfaction appears to hold generally positive attitudes toward their job, while the ones dissatisfied holds negative attitudes towards their job (Lumley et al, 2011).
2.3.3 Performance
Employees mood can influence performance after they are engaged in a chosen task (George & Brief, 1996). Firstly, the mood that an employee is in can affect goal setting because workers in a negative mood can see themselves as a less efficacious and capable person, making them set a lower reference and objective criterion (George & Brief, 1996). Secondly, workers that are experiencing negative mood within their jobs have lower levels of motivation towards a task, being less persistence and making less effort in the tasks that they are performing (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). Negative mood is transmittable within teams and members of a company. Therefore, when employees are experiencing and sharing a negative mood, the lack of motivation will be spread between employees and the whole performance of a sector will be decreased (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). Implementing innovation within a company is a “two-edge sword” (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016), because this implementation will generate functional and dysfunctional consequences for work teams. Generally, implementing innovation involves new tasks and
procedures for team members, which can contribute to increasing their work load (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016), therefore, teams that experience more innovations in a period of time in their work will probably have higher uncertainty and workload than teams that implement fewer innovations (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016), proving the point that employees can be negatively affected by the implementation of innovation concept in their work. Indeed, traditional prescriptions for organizations to enhance creativity and innovation encompass the encouragement of breaking the rules, challenging authority, creating competition and stress, and taking (Holten & Bollingtoft, 2015), helping to create a stressful and harmful environment for the employees who are working in this place.
3 Methodology
In this section we will present the methodology used in this thesis. We will firstly present our research philosophy and foundations of choice for our approaches. Secondly, we will present our system of data collection and how we proceed to get information and the reasons that we have been using such approach.
3.1 Research Philosophy
There are some reasons why an understanding of philosophical issues is very helpful to researchers. Firstly, reaseachers have an obligation to understand the philosophical underspinnings of their research in order to have a clear sense of their reflexive role (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Secondly, understading the philosophical foundations of a research is essential for clarifying research designs used. Thirdly, knowledge of philsophy can help researchers to recognize which designs will work and which will not (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018), and we have been following this strategy of starting with an understanding of our piholophical foundations in order to achieve our data collection approach, characteristic that will be clarified later on in this section.
This thesis we have conducted a qualitative study. We are not looking for quantification in this thesis, therefore a quantitative study makes no sense in this case. With a qualitative approach, we can analyze our findings with methods that are able to take qualitative data as input without converting it to numbers, enhancing our capabilities of interpreting the data that we have gathered in questions that makes sense in this thesis, providing the context of
them, as well as the meaning, perspectives and experiences, discovering how innovative company system works and what are the consequences for employees lives.
The ontology of a study represents the basic assumptions that the researchers makes about the nature of reality (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). There are four different ontological positions. Firstly, there is the realism, where there is a single truth and the facts exist and can be revealed (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Secondly, there is internal realism, where the truth exists, but is obscure and the facts are concrete, but cannot be accessed directly (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Thirdly, there is relativism, where there are many truths and the facts depend on viewpoint of observer (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Finally, there is nominalism, where there is no truth and the facts are all human creations (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018).
In this thesis a relativistic approach is being used. The relativist position assumes that different observers may have different viewpoints, therefore there may have different truths (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Since we are connected with human behaviors and factors that may change among persons, the historic context, background and different experineces may vary, therefore researchers must have an open midset to note different opinions and behaviours. A realist ontology is usually linked to a positivist epistemology, which in turn tends to produce a quantitative study design, and numerical data collection and analysis (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018), therefore this approach was discarted.
The epistemology views about the most appropriate ways of enquiring into the nature of the world (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). There are two contrasting views, being the first one positivism and the second social constructionism. The key idea of positivism is that the social world exists externally, and that its properties should be measured through objective methods (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). In the social constructionism, the idea is that reality is determined by people rather than by objective and external factors, hence it is mort important to appreciate the way people make sense of their experience (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018).
Our epistemological position is social constructism. According to this view, we should try to understand and appreciate the different experiences that people have, rather than search for external causes and fundamental laws to explain their behaviour (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). This is because human action arises from the sense that people make of different situations, rather than as a direct response to external stimuli, therefore the task of the researcher should not be gather facts and measure the frequency of patterns of social behaviour, but appreciate the different constructions and meaning that people place upon their experiences (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). We will basing our findings in secondary data mostly dealing with previous experineces of different employees places in different situations, associated with others textual informations (next section will clarify it). Therefore, previous experiences and the way that they felt about it cannot be measured, excluiding a positivist approach.
3.2 Data Collection
Despite the characteristic of variety and flexibility when gathering data of qualitate researches, the researches must be responsible to select an appropriate one (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). That is why we have selected our collection following three steps, where firstly we looked to our research problems and how to approach it. Secondly, we connected with our epistemological and ontological beliefs to finally find our technique, which will be archival research and textual data. Utilizing archival research and textual data, this technique enables us to complete data-data and data-theory comparison in order to reach our findings, together with analysis of examples of cases of companies that have implemented changes in their processes aiming the improvment of employee’s perception of this pressure innovative environment. Since our research question and thesis can be considered sensitive for employees that are still working for the company that we would research about, especially the negative side and negative impacts that the company has over their own employees, this topic can be tricky to adress without having a bias in employees response in an interview, because a negative state given by an employee can have negative effects in the relationship between them and the company that they are currently working for. Therefore, the subject is sensitive to be approached with interviews, that is why we believe that archival research and textual data can provide us a better inside in this topic than interviews.
Secondary textual data are written sources of information produced for a purpose other than research but with some relevance to a given research project. They are often called non-responsive data because they were not created by research participants responding to a researcher (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018). Utilizing secondary textual data, we have more possibilities to research, we can approach sources like company and government reports, websites, archival data, advertisements, newspaper articles, books and blogs (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018), and since our theme is directly connected with innovative companies, we can find more information about them in the internet, because internet search engines can facilitate the quest for seconday data (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018), and as mentioned before, during a time that we can not rely on others to get data, we believe that this is the best way to approach the situation with our research question.
The advantages of using secondary data are, first, savings in time and effort for the researcher, and second, the data sources often appear to be of high quality, especially when published by firms and governments (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe, Jackson, & Jaspersen, 2018), and as researchers, we will get information only through peer reviewed articles, in order to increase the quality of textual data gathered. Also, having a secondary data approach, we have the possibility of having a broad coverage, having historical perspectives and how things have changed during the time, something that is not feasible through primary data. Another point is that by utilizing archival research there is no bias due poorly constructed questions or unconscious manipulation of answers, and due our research question, these can be harmful to our results.
3.3 Data Analysis
Since we are working with secondary data in our thesis, we started the analysis with a familiarization process. We have collected data from different types of sources, most of them are peer reviews articles published, but we also have collected interviews done by previous researchers with managers and employees from technology companies, case studies, magazine reports, media press publications (we focused on respected journals like NY Times and Forbes) and previous published books. In this process we were focused in learning about how the data was collected, what was the population and samples from studies and the objectives of the original study.
Secondly, we have done a reflection upon the data gathered working in classifying the topics we had, evaluating how the data help us answer our research questions and support our findings. Having a theoretical framework as a background, we moved on to the third phase of analysis, where we have conducted research on secondary data to find real life examples of tech companies that are trying to reduce stress in their working environment while increasing productivity and job satisfaction among their employees. We mostly based ourselves in previous employees ‘statements and interviews that have been done to researches as well as to media press. Also, we looked for statements that tech companies released in the media and try to combine employee and statement to create a match or a clash between this information, in order to verify the authenticity of company press releases. In this phase, the focus was to understand which techniques technology companies were applying to their working environment in order to reduce stress among employees. In addition, we also framed these real live cases by providing a picture of the outcome of applied techniques based in the three main topics: stress among employees, job satisfaction and productivity. By having analysed the data gathered and supporting them with real life examples, we are able to contribute and provide a theory that may help companies to reduce job stress, while keeping productivity and job satisfaction high. The figure 01 illustrates the described data collection and analysis process.
4 Empirical Findings
In this section we present our empirical findings. Firstly, we start providing information and insights of the characteristics that technology companies have in their working environment. Secondly, we move on by describing how companies are trying to reduce job stress among their employees and which methods/techniques they are applying in their working environment. Lastly, we provide real case examples of companies that have used some of those techniques and what was the outcome for their employees when they applied such methods.
4.1 Working Environment of Technology Companies
When it comes to the working environment of technology companies, it was possible to observe statements that enhance and verify that tech companies have high workloads. Some researchers stated that employees that are working with an innovation-oriented company will face higher
workload and uncertainty (González-Romá & Hernández, 2016). In the highly competitive and fast-paced environment of tech industries, high level of stress, burnout and work-related problems are quite common
(Bradford, 2018). Highly innovation-oriented firms will lead their industry in employee job stress and
employee dissatisfaction (Simpson, Siguaw, & Enz, 2006). An employee from a tech company
stated that “it is common emails arrive past midnight, followed by text messages asking why they were not
answered”(Kontor & Streitfeld, 2015), also Dina Vaccari, a employee that joined a tech
company in 2008 states that “One time I didn’t sleep for four days straight because I had work to do” (Kontor & Streitfeld, 2015). One president from a tech industry provide a manifesto to their employees in 1997, that still takes place until today, where it says that ”in normal companis you
can work long, hard, or smart but in here, you have to choose all of them” (Kontor & Streitfeld, 2015),
in one interview he also added that ”I know it is not easy to work here”. A former employee of this tech company stated that ”When you’re not able to give your absolute all, 80 hours a week, they
see it as a major weakness” (Kontor & Streitfeld, 2015).
When it comes to the pace of development of innovations, statements confirmed that tech companies are inserted in a fast and highly competitive environment. “Analysing the pace of
technological companies, it can be observed that due the fact that the principal market characteristic is the fast-paced environment, a company in this market has to generate continuously new ideas and products in order to sustain its competitive advantage among others” (Covin & Miles, 1999). A strategy that is
